By Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, SAN
In 2019, I wrote a piece narrating the harrowing experience of customers with virtually all the banks in Nigeria. A friend of mine who is a seasoned banker by all accounts, read it and came to me to explain the challenges of the banking system. The following week on September 24, 2019, I wrote a Rejoinder titled Banking with Less Tears.
The sordid situation of bank customers has worsened as they now bank with blood. Everything has crashed and no one is in charge at all. Some banks claimed to have upgraded their networks recently, even though it has now turned out to be a downgrade. Since then, these banks have taken over the funds of their customers, and put them at the receiving end. You are not allowed to view your statement of account, you do not know your balance and you cannot even trace or trail your transactions. It is that bad. You just accept what the banks tell you, as if we are in some animal kingdom where there is no law and order. It has become a wicked game of chance, at times putting the lives of customers at risk in emergency cases.
Permit me to share a scenario with you. It is the end of the month and I needed to pay the salary of members of staff who have worked diligently throughout the month. My banking App was acting crazy showing me that the system could not process my request or that my session had expired and so I kept trying until a few minutes later, I started receiving debit alerts in multiples, indicating that the same transactions that the bank claimed had failed actually succeeded in multiple trials. I then had to start tracing all my recipients one after the other to get them to confirm the multiple transfers and to make refunds to me.
Then another ugly scenario occurred. A particular transaction was posted as successful from my end and I was promptly debited but the beneficiary did not receive value for the transfer. We were advised by the bank to wait for some days and we waited. The bank sent us Session Number, which was to indicate that the transaction was successful, but the recipient still did not receive value for the transfer. Day ten, still no value and the bank began to tell stories of what happened in the Garden of Eden, of how Eve gave Adam the forbidden fruit and how Satan was expelled from heaven.
In this cruel and wicked plot of system or network upgrade, some Nigerian banks have now perfected the crooked style of fleecing their customers, joggling transactions at will and denying people of the use and enjoyment of their hard-earned resources. I have lost countless transactions that cannot be traced at all. It is nothing but premeditated fraud, cleverly hatched with the connivance of the supervising authorities, who all turn the blind eye.
The reality is that banking business in Nigeria has become a pain for the majority of our people. And this should not be so at all, if the relevant authorities wake up to assert their regulatory powers under the law. From my own personal experience and the cases that I have handled, I do believe that banks in Nigeria are having a field day feasting on their customers. I’ve seen and handled cases, where great dreams, robust projects and laudable visions, have been shattered and eclipsed by banks, in the name of loans or other facilities.
The corruption in the banks is mind-boggling, with billions of Naira ending up in the pockets of bankers. This cannot and should not be allowed to continue. Every financial institution must be compelled to operate in a transparent and an accountable fashion, they should grant their customers access to their funds and avail them of all banking transactions as and when due. No bank should be allowed to keep to itself the details of banking transactions of its customers.
The bank-customer relationship is fiduciary in nature, planted on the solid foundation of trust and confidence. Any and all funds held in trust by the bank for a customer should not be subject to secret, whimsical and subjective dealings. It is not enough for the Central Bank of Nigeria to ask customers to escalate breaches by the banks to the CBN. These sharp practices are prevalent with almost all the banks so they are widespread and should be within the knowledge of CBN. The open and hidden bank charges have no end, they come in different patterns and they have no limits until the account is ultimately liquidated.
You walk into the bank or the bank walks into your office, to open an account. The account opening package is deliberately drafted in such a way that you would need prayers to fill them. The terms and conditions of the relationship are so lengthy and boring that you’re just left with no option than to accept them the way they are. Then by month end you get to know what you really signed in for, when the debit alerts start hitting your mailbox as follows: “Stamp Duty Charge”, “Account Maintenance Charge”, “Monthly Maintenance Charge”, “SMS Charge”, “ATM Maintenance Charge”, etc. Meanwhile, you do not get any debit alert of Cost of Transaction (COT) charges, usually very outrageous, but normally concealed.
Pray, what other transaction did you open the account for, if not to cover all your financial dealings? And why the duplicitous charges? I opened an account with a bank with some thousands of naira. I decided to keep the money for some time just so I could have it again in future. In the months to follow, I was hit with charges upon charges, even when I did not operate the account to withdraw from it. As of today, the account is virtually empty and drained, through heavy monthly maintenance charges and other sundry deductions. I have left the account intact, waiting for the day the entire money would finish and then proceed to serve the bank court notice for all the fraudulent deductions. For well over three or four years now, that bank account has not been rendered dormant for the purpose of their monthly deductions, but if you have anything urgent to use the account for, you’ll be told to go and activate it, meanwhile the monthly deductions are automatic in favour of the bank, even when it is said to be inactive.
Now we are told not to carry cash but all the ATMs are dry and empty and you are forced to buy Naira in Nigeria. Many times, the POS machines decline transactions, debit your account and then force you to still go and look for cash anyhow, in order to trade. Then you are told to go to your bank to document a five thousand naira transaction or wait for automatic reversal, which in some cases never comes. I have lost a lot of money in this process as when I weigh the cost of going to the bank, the time to be wasted and what I stand to lose thereby, I just allow the bank to walk away with the money, at times running into thousands of naira. And you can very well imagine that this goes on in all the banks, whereby on a daily basis, customers are being fleeced of their hard-earned resources by these smart alecs.
News recently broke of a bank that had accumulated close to eighty billion Naira of such funds, only for one of its trusted members of staff to elope with the fund to another land. Bank customers are forever at the receiving end as the banks are not ready to lift a finger to assist anyone but to keep declaring bogus profits every year. A particular bank is always reported as being the very best of them all in the media and I then wonder what statistics are being used in reaching these conclusions that do not tally with the facts of what we experience with that particular bank everyday. Lately, the banks have become more daring, draconian and greedy, making arbitrary deductions from the accounts of their customers.
Here is another of such fraudulent scenarios. A bank approached a customer to deliver credit cards programmed for foreign currency transactions. The customer is to travel, use the ATM cards for his transactions abroad and then come back to reimburse with the bank the Naira equivalent. On getting to his destination, the ATM card did not work, despite all efforts made. Meanwhile, the bank is busy sending debit notes to the customer upon the said ATM card that has never been used at all.
I have read the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act and also the Central Bank of Nigeria Act and I verily believe that CBN has only let the banks loose on their hapless customers and to get away with all manner of fraudulent activities. The stories are so mind-boggling, of cases of unauthorized withdrawals from the accounts of customers, of insider trading, round trips and such other financial frauds, that go unpunished. The banks are in custody of the account and the money, deploying technology against their customers and smiling away whilst the customer is in sorrow and penury.
It is ungodly and very unfair that CBN has for so long allowed this monster to fester. No banking licence should be allowed to thrive upon any proven case of fraud. None at all. In the same way that customers have been sent to their early graves and business men and women have been led to commit suicide on account of very strange and inexplicable liquidations, so also should no bank be allowed to trade or survive on fraud and mischief.
The existing laws in Nigeria require CBN to act to protect bank customers. The bank is an institution, some have been in existence for years, declaring bogus profits at the expense of their customers. Why should any institution grant a one-year loan upon very excessive interest rates and still expect the customer to pay it back in one year? What kind of business will such a person execute, in a country where there is no infrastructure to support businesses and enterprises and where the entire profit is consumed by generators and diesel? This should not continue and I urge all relevant authorities to intervene urgently, to save our people. Enough of banking with tears and blood.
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